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Thread: Allen Ward Cox - Florida Death Row

  1. #1
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    Allen Ward Cox - Florida Death Row




    Summary of Offense:

    Allen Ward Cox was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Thomas Baker. The murder occurred on December 21, 1998 at the Lake Correctional Institute, where Cox was an inmate serving several life sentences for kidnapping, sexual battery and aggravated battery. On December 20, 1998, Cox noticed that someone had broken into his personal footlocker and stolen $500. According to the testimony of several inmates, Cox announced to the other inmates in his dormitory that he would give $50 to anyone who would identify the thief. Cox threatened to kill the thief upon discovering his identity and indicated no concern for the consequences.

    On December 21, 1998, during the inmates' lunch hour, Cox motioned for Thomas Baker to come over to him. Cox hit Baker, knocking him to the ground. Baker struggled to free himself from the attack and repeatedly denied stealing the $500. Cox then stabbed Baker three times with an ice-pick-shaped shank. Cox fled behind the prison pump house and hid the shank in a pipe. After being stabbed, Thomas Baker fled the scene to nearby correctional officers. Baker identified his attacker as “Big Al, Echo Dorm, Quad Three.” Baker hysterically motioned to the officers that he was having trouble breathing and could feel his lungs filling up with blood. Baker died en route to the hospital. Medical examiners testified the fatal stab wound pierced Baker’s lungs and aorta. Cox returned to his dorm where he confronted Donny Cox (no relation) about his stolen money. Cox threatened Donny and told him he would kill him too if he had anything to do with the stolen money. Cox returned to his cell where he attacked his cellmate Lawrence Wood. Cox told Wood he was lucky because he would also have been stabbed if Cox had not already discarded the shank.

    Cox was sentenced to death in Lake County on July 24, 2000.

  2. #2
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    On April 21, 2011, the US Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals AFFIRMED the district court's DENIAL of Cox's habeas petition challenging his capital conviction and sentence.

    Opinion here

  3. #3
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    In Monday's (October 3, 2011) United States Supreme Court orders, Cox's petition for a writ of certiorari and motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis was DENIED.

    This petition was from a lower court's denial.

    Lower Ct: United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
    Case Nos.: (09-12480)

  4. #4
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    November 18, 2017

    LCI inmate asks judge to ‘please’ sentence him to death

    By Frank Stanfield
    Daily Commercial

    TAVARES – A man sentenced to die by lethal injection for killing another prisoner 19 years ago is up for resentencing, but he has told a judge he would rather be executed.

    Allen Cox, 55, citing poor health, a comfortable, safe cell on death row and fears he will be preyed upon by prisoners in general population, has asked Circuit Judge Larry Semento to keep his death sentence intact.


    “But if you deside (sic) to sentence me to life the very first time one of those scum bags trys (sic) to rob me I promise you that I will put a big hole in his heart the same way I did the last one and his blood will also be on your hands as well as mine.”


    Cox was convicted of stabbing Thomas Baker, 25, with a homemade knife at Lake Correctional Institute just before Christmas 1998 because he believed Baker stole almost $500 cash he had collected for drug transactions behind bars.


    It’s not unheard of for a death row inmate to volunteer for execution, said John Spivey, executive assistant public defender. Public defenders still work for the defendant.


    “We
    almost become an agent of the judge,” he said. Public defender investigators gather mitigating evidence that might exclude the prisoner from death, like mental illness or brain injuries. “Our duty is not really changed.”

    Prosecutors also keep working while awaiting a ruling from the judge, said Assistant State Attorney Walter Forgie.

    Cox sent a letter to the trial judge asking for the death sentence shortly after he was convicted.

    “I don’t want to die an old man in prison. They will be doing me a favor if they give me a shot and put me to sleep,” he told Circuit Judge T. Michael Johnson.

    Cox is entitled to a new sentencing trial because recent court rulings demand that juries be unanimous in death sentence recommendations. His jury in 2000 recommended death by a 10-2 vote.

    In his letter to the judge dated Oct. 23, he said he didn’t want his family to have to come down from Kentucky to testify on his behalf.

    “Secound (sic) if I were to get life DOC will lock me in a cell for five years with no TV, no radio, no fan, no canteen and no visits and then after those five years Ill (sic) be sent to one of the very worst prisons in the state of Florida where the blacks prey on any whites that show the least bit of weakness. They rob, rape and beat up and extort protection money from the old and weak and Ill (sic) be 60 years old in five years way to (sic) old for all that crap.

    “I have been to these types of prisons where they send ex-death row inmates and you have to carry a knife with you at all times and sleep with one under your pillow and you MUST be prepared to use it.”

    Cox said he has “several” medical problems “and I suspect the skin cancer has already spread and will kill me in a few years.”

    He asked the judge to “please” sentence him to death. He said he knows the judge will have concerns “but I’m fully aware of what im (sic) doing.″

    “And if in a few years they decide to execute me so be it. I’m ready to see if there really is anything on the other side but I dought (sic) there is.”

    He said he would accept whatever the judge decided but stressed there was no point in the court delaying his request “because I will not ever change my mind about this.”

    Cox was already serving three life sentences, including one for breaking a store clerk’s hip when he threw her over a wall and raping her on top of a mound of fire ants during a robbery.

    Johnson, who spent years as a public defender, said Cox had forced him into making “the most difficult decision as a judge and as a human being,” but he ruled the state proved four aggravating circumstances: He was imprisoned, had prior violent felonies, the crime was heinous, atrocious and cruel, and it was cold, calculated and premeditated.

    http://www.dailycommercial.com/news/...e-him-to-death

  5. #5
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Allen Cox, sentenced to death for murdering fellow inmate, seeking life in resentencing

    By Frank Stanfield
    Daily Commercial

    TAVARES — From prosecution accounts of murder, armed burglary and a torturous, crushing rape, to defense stories of growing up in an impoverished “family war zone,” jurors Wednesday listened to the opening statements in the resentencing case of Allen Cox, who stabbed a fellow prisoner to death in 1998.

    Cox was found guilty of killing Thomas Baker in 2000 and a jury recommended death. He wrote a letter to Circuit Judge T. Michael Johnson, asking him to follow the jury's recommendation.

    “I want you to go along with the jury’s recommendation and send me to death row,” Cox wrote.

    Johnson did.

    Now, Cox is seeking a life sentence — his attorney said he's come to see the value in life.

    'A perfect storm'

    “What’s up with that guy over there?” John Spivey, executive assistant public defender, asked, pointing to his client.

    He then went on to describe a life “like a documentary film of the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s.”

    Cox grew up in a shack in the Appalachian area of Kentucky. There was no running water in the shack, Spivey said, so Cox and his sister had to fetch buckets full of creek water. The unsanitary water gave them worms.

    He had no shoes, and other school children ridiculed him for it. Nor was there any food in the house. Cox ate two meals a day—school, a breakfast and a lunch.

    Cox and his sisters were lucky to get a bowl of beans, Spivey said.

    He was beaten with hands and tree limbs by his parents, who also battled each other.

    At age 9, Cox came home to find his father pinning his mother to the floor, trying to cut off her hair.

    “Allen’s mother was not much better," Spivey said. "She shot at her husband 14 times."

    When Cox's parents split, his mother dropped him off at the home of his father and his new wife and said, “Here he is. Y’all wanted him. If he ever comes back, I’ll kill him.”

    He was raped by a 27-year-old cousin when he was 10.

    Cox's upbringing led to impulsive, bad behavior, Spivey said. Add to that, he had numerous head injuries, including beatings by inmates in prison

    Spivey promised jurors they would hear from a parade of experts: psychologists, doctors, and that they would see brain scans from MRIs, PET scans, and hear the testimony of a toxicologist. The scientists will testify that he has had brain shrinkage in the area that controls rational thought and impulse control.

    One expert will testify that environment can actually change a person’s genetic makeup, he said.

    Cox started “self-medicating” with drugs and alcohol at 13. He was so depressed, that at age 15, he tried to commit suicide by eating rat poison.

    Authorities recommended he receive psychiatric treatment when he was 18.

    “The evidence will show he was not dealt a full hand,” Spivey said.

    When Cox was being treated at Lake Correctional Institution, he was prescribed a drug for depression, was off of it for two weeks, and then given a different drug.

    Spivey promised that the defense would not aggressively question the prosecution witnesses.

    “Sometimes the facts are just the facts,” he said. “We’re not going to argue justification. We see our mission as a quest to discover the truth.”

    The truth, Spivey said, was that “it was a perfect storm.”

    From the prosecution

    Assistant State Attorney Rob Lewis described the storm that exploded in the rec yard of the prison just a few days before Christmas that year.

    Someone had robbed Cox’s footlocker of $500 cash. He was doing a good business selling drugs inside the prison walls. He offered a $100 reward for information and got a homemade knife called a “shank” from another prisoner.

    When Cox’s roommate told him he might get in trouble for having the knife fashioned out of a welding rod, he said, “I don’t care. I’m going to make sure the one who took my money doesn’t get to spend it.”

    Concealing the weapon in a seam of his trousers, he approached Thomas Baker and stabbed him three times. Prisoners who witnessed the attack at the time said Cox straddled the smaller man and began “punching down” on him.

    Baker, 25, staggered up to a corrections officer and told her he had been stabbed.

    “This is the shank,” Lewis said, holding up slim weapon in a plastic bag.

    Stabbed just below the left shoulder, the puncture wound did not cause much external bleeding, but the blade penetrated Baker’s seventh rib, left lung, aorta and right lung. Soon, he was drowning in his own blood.

    That caused psychological terror before he died, making the murder heinous, atrocious, and cruel, one of the statutory aggravating factors for the death penalty, Lewis said.

    It was also cold, calculating and premeditated, another aggravator, plus, he was a convicted violent offender and was convicted of a felony while a prisoner.

    Asked who stabbed him, Baker told the corrections officer it was “Big Al.”

    Prison officials locked down the facility, with every prisoner counted and in his own cell.

    Cox reportedly told his roommate, “I know you did it. I know you broke into my house,” and he slugged him.

    Cox was serving three life sentences before the knife attack.

    In 1989, he went into a convenience store in south Florida with a T-shirt over his head and holes cut out for his eyes. He grabbed the clerk by the arm and dragged her to the end of the shopping center, ordered her to take off her pants and perform a sex act on him. She refused and tried to escape by climbing a wall. He grabbed her, threw her down and raped her on top of a fire ant mound. Her pelvis was broken in the attack.

    Before that, he entered a couple’s home during a burglary and struck the husband over the head with a heavy piece of office equipment.

    Looking for life

    A Lake County jury found Cox guilty of the prison murder and recommended a death sentence by a 10-2 vote.

    Judge Johnson, a former longtime public defender, told Cox that he had forced him into making “the most difficult decision as a judge and as a human being,” but that the state had proven its case.

    In the letter he wrote Johnson, Cox, 37 at the time, said he was confident he would get a new trial.

    “But if they don’t, and they carry out my death sentence, the way I see it, I don’t want to die an old man in prison," he said. "They will be doing me a favor if they give me a shot and put me to sleep.”

    Cox got his shot at a new sentence when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all death recommendations by jurors must be unanimous.

    In 2017, he wrote to Circuit Judge Larry Semento and asked him not to overturn his sentence.

    “But if you decide to sentence me to life, the very first time one of those scum bags tries to rob me I promise you that I will put a big hole in his heart the same way I did the last one and his blood will also be on your hands as well as mine,” Cox wrote.

    Now, however, Cox has changed his mind.

    “He developed a relationship with our attorney and mitigation specialist,” Spivey said recently. “Thirty years is a long time in isolation."

    https://www.dailycommercial.com/stor...ng/7393944001/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  6. #6
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Lake County Jury: Cox should remain on death row for fellow prisoner's murder

    By Frank Stanfield
    The Daily Commercial

    TAVARES — Allen Cox, who twice wrote judges saying he wanted to be on death row for killing a fellow prisoner, and later changed his mind and asked to be moved to general population, was granted his original wish Friday when a jury voted 12-0 for execution in his 1999 case.

    Cox was serving three life sentences when he stabbed and killed a fellow inmate, Thomas Baker, in 1998.

    He was found guilty and the first jury voted 10-2 for death, but Cox got another bite of the apple when the U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that death sentences must be unanimous.

    After his 2000 conviction, Cox wrote the trial judge, T. Michael Johnson, saying, “I don’t want to die an old man in prison. They will be doing me a favor by giving me a shot and putting me to sleep.”

    Nor did they hear about the letter he wrote to Circuit Judge Larry Semento. “…if you decide to sentence me to life, the very first time one of those scum bags tries to rob me I promise you that I will put a big hole in the heart the way I did the last one, and his blood will also be on your hands as well as mine.”

    A prisoner’s sentence request is not admissible in court, said Assistant State Attorney Rich Buxman, the chief prosecutor in the case.

    But jurors did hear about Cox’s original statement when someone robbed his footlocker of $500, money earned selling drugs inside the prison walls.

    He got a homemade knife, known as a “shank” and told his roommate, “I’m going to make sure the one who took my money doesn’t get to spend it.”

    Much of the testimony was read to the jury from transcripts of witnesses and experts, including some who have died or moved on since the trial was held more than 20 years ago.

    One of those witnesses was Elizabeth McMahon, a psychologist, who said prisoners who don’t fight back will be exploited again.

    New experts appeared for the defense, some with brain scans showing how Cox’s brain is shrinking, how he suffered head injuries and how drugs and alcohol affected his behavior.

    His childhood was a horror of physical abuse and poverty, Spivey and Assistant Public Defender Morris Carranza said.

    The jury did not find that Cox committed two statutory requirements for the death penalty: that the crime was cold, calculated and premeditated; or heinous, atrocious, and cruel, said John Spivey, the executive public defender.

    However, the jury agreed that he had been convicted of prior violent crimes and that he killed a fellow prisoner.

    Court paperwork shows there was debate over whether to let jurors hear about horrific animal abuse Cox committed as a juvenile, but that evidence was ultimately not presented.

    One of the transcripts that jurors did hear was that of a woman who had been kidnapped and thrown over a wall, which broke her pelvis. She was also raped on top of an ant mound.

    The woman is now dead, but the testimony remained as powerful and disturbing as the day she testified.

    It was also a reminder that Cox was already serving three life sentences when he stabbed Baker, 25, to death in front of a crowd of witnesses in the prison yard at Lake Correctional Institution.

    Jurors had to wonder: Is another life sentence justice?

    It is not clear if the defense will ask for a pre-sentence hearing. The sentence is up to Circuit Judge James Baxley, but he would have to make a strong legal argument to reject the jury’s recommendation.

    https://www.dailycommercial.com/stor...te/9619477002/
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  7. #7
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Edited:

    Death sentence, again, for Allen Cox, convicted in death of a fellow Lake County prisoner

    By Frank Stanfield
    Daily Commercial

    TAVARES — Allen Cox, sentenced to death for killing a fellow prisoner at Lake Correctional Institution, has been sentenced again to die by lethal injection.

    A jury recommended a death sentence in a 10-2 vote in 2000 for the killing of Thomas Baker. But when the U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that such recommendations must be unanimous, Cox got another chance.

    So, in April, a new jury heard aggravating and mitigating evidence. The jurors were unanimous this time: death. Circuit Judge James Baxley imposed the sentence Monday.

    https://www.dailycommercial.com/stor...r/10596859002/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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